Rebel Mortar Attack in Somalia's Capital Kills Peacekeeper

Published: April 2, 2007

Mortar shells crashed into central Mogadishu on Sunday, and Uganda said its first peacekeeper had been killed there as battles pitting Ethiopian and Somali troops against insurgents raged for a fourth day.

Clan leaders fighting alongside Islamist rebels called for a second truce in as many weeks, but hundreds more Ethiopian soldiers were reported to be arriving in the city, and there was no letup in clashes that have killed scores of civilians.

Bodies lay in dusty streets because it was too dangerous to collect them. The International Committee of the Red Cross has said that the fighting in Mogadishu is the worst in more than 15 years of violence here.

Ugandan peacekeepers sent as part of an African Union force last month to help Somalia's interim government restore stability have been caught in the cross-fire, pinned down at strategic sites, including the airports and seaports.

''Our troops were guarding the presidential compound on Saturday when it was struck by mortars,'' a Ugandan military spokesman, Maj. Felix Kulayigye, said by telephone from Kampala. ''One of our soldiers was killed.'' Five others were wounded.

Previous ambushes by insurgents that wounded two Ugandans had already made other African states wary of flying in more men to expand the African Union force to its planned strength of 8,000. Burundi, Malawi, Ghana and Nigeria have all promised to send troops.

A Nigerian Army spokesman said Nigerian soldiers were ready to go once final details were worked out with the African Union. He gave no date for their arrival.

Fighting broke out Sunday, with a barrage of artillery shells striking residential neighborhoods around the main soccer stadium -- the site of some of the heaviest exchanges since the Ethiopian offensive began Thursday.

Hundreds of Ethiopian reinforcements drove into the city on Sunday, passing through the southern outskirts in about 40 trucks, the independent Somali broadcaster Shabelle reported.

More had crossed the border from Ethiopia, it added.

The fighting shattered a brief and shaky truce between the Ethiopians and leaders of the city's dominant clan, the Hawiye.

Hawiye elders issued a statement on Sunday calling for a new cease-fire, for Ethiopian forces to withdraw and for international help burying the dead and treating the wounded.

Security officials said the African Union was trying to arrange more talks between the sides, but faced mutual mistrust.